‘Humanity is a privilege’: Umar Khalid on his six years in an Indian jail without trial

Umar Khalid reading in his cell. Photograph: Supplied View image in fullscreen Umar Khalid reading in his cell. Photograph: Supplied Interview ‘Humanity is a privilege’: Umar Khalid on his six years in an Indian jail without trial Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi Exclusive: Activist tells of his life as one of India’s most prominent political prisoners and his opposition to the government of Narendra Modi P rison is hardest at sunset. As the thousands of prisoners incarcerated in Delhi’s most infamous jail are cast out of their cells and forced into the dank yard until darkness falls, prisoner number 626714 feels the punishing dread begin to rise. Yet the inmate – better known as Umar Khalid – was recently moved to discover that another political prisoner, exiled at a camp thousands of miles from India , wrote of the very same feeling more than 150 years ago. “Even Dostoevsky refers to this state of mind at sunset in his prison memoir,” said Khalid, in his first interview since he was jailed in 2020. “I guess maybe it is because it starts sinking in that another day of your life has been spent in captivity.” View image in fullscreen Umar Khalid at a rally before his arrest in 2020 on terror charges he describes as ‘dystopian’. Outside the walls of Tihar prison, there are few in India who do not know Khalid’s name . He rose to prominence over the past decade, first as a fiery student rights activist and then the face of anti-government protests that swept the country in 2019, the first major challenge to the government of Narendra Modi. By September 2020, he had been arrested and jailed as a terrorist, accused of being a “key conspirator” in deadly religious riots in Delhi and of conspiring to bring about “violent regime change”. TV anchors still spit his name on nightly news shows, calling him a Muslim terrorist and an anti-national. Leftwing activists shout his name at protests and wear T-shirts bearing his face. For rights groups and activists, Khalid has come to epitomise the crackdown on dissent under Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has ruled for 12 years and stands accused of weaponising the judicial system to go after opponents. Khalid, a Muslim and leftwing rights activist, is a particularly fierce critic of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, which seeks to turn India from a secular country into a Hindu nation. He has accused the Modi government of fuelling the harassment and persecution of the country’s 200 million Muslims as well as other minorities. The BJP has repeatedly denied all allegations of religious discrimination. International human rights groups have widely condemned Khalid’s nearly six years in jail without trial as unjust. New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, sent him a handwritten note to express his solidarity, prompting an enraged response from the Indian government. The BJP maintains that India’s judicial system is independent and that Khalid’s prosecution is not connected to politics. Due to the conditions of his